


Building Culture

by Derin



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 07:21:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10271291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derin/pseuds/Derin
Summary: Wars are messy. Their aftermath is even more so. After the war, a yeerk searches for some way to make up for his past, and hork-bajir struggle to recover from theirs.





	1. Confrontation

I had moved through the trees on hork-bajir feet many times, but never had they been my own. It was different, somehow; the sensations sharper, the world more present, the danger of injury more important. But that danger was low. A hork-bajir was at home in the woods. I was at home in the woods.

 

The free colony was easy to find. During the war, they had had to be so careful to hide their location, but now dispossessed hork-bajir were flocking in looking for community or home or purpose, and somebody had cut directions into the forest; long slashes cut regularly into the tree bark. To anybody who wasn’t a hork-bajir, they would look like normal slashes, but my new eyes picked them out as easily as Pool pier markings.

 

My hearts beat quicker, stronger as I moved closer. It was a sensation that I could no longer ignore, no longer block out. I wasn’t ready for this. But I knew I couldn’t turn back; if I didn’t do this now, I would never be ready. This wasn’t about me. This was about what he – they – deserved.

 

I moved down the slope, turned, and suddenly, there was the valley. The sea of greens and browns stretched before me, offering lush bark and clean water, high trees and caves for shelter, community in the hundred or so hork-bajir moving throughout it. Soon it would be overcrowded, with more and more hork-bajir refugees pouring in, and new homes would have to be found; for now, it was perfect.

 

“Hello, friend.” The speaker spoke hork-bajir with the telltale lilt of the younger generation, those who had learned from parents used to speaking a smattering of Galard. I recognised the voice, and the welcoming face peering up at me, from her television appearances. Toby, the seer and leader of the Free Colony.

 

“Hello,” I said. “I am new.” She knew that, of course. Stupid thing to say.

 

“Do you need somewhere to stay? We are building homes to the South, I will show you.”

 

“No. I… do not know if I will stay.”

 

She looked confused at that. A fair reaction. Where else would a hork-bajir refugee go?

 

“I am looking for a fr… for someone. He is Lot Kandek. You know?”

 

She nodded. “He came in two days ago. I’ll get him for you. Who should I say is looking for him?”

 

I shook my head. “Does not matter. I will find.”

 

There was no way he’d want to see me.

 

But the seer just smiled. She clearly had no idea what I was, but somehow she’d grasped the nature of the problem.

 

“I will convince him to see you,” she said. “Wait there.” She gestured to a small, concealed clearing behind a particularly thick copse of trees.

 

I shook my head. “Should not have come.”

 

Her voice became stern. “If we are to be a community, if our people are to survive, then we must heal the rifts created in slavery and war. We must confront our paths and clean out our wounds before they can heal. You have a responsibility to be here. Wait.”

 

I waited, feeling distinctly out of place.

 

I was out of place.

 

What was I doing here, reminding Lot that I existed? Disrupting this peaceful community? No matter how long I’d stolen their forms, no matter what andalite technology had given me, I would never be a hork-bajir. I was tainted by my actions. I was a slaver, a life-destroyer. I’d come for Lot; that’s what I’d told myself. Why had I believed that? The mere fact that I knew he wouldn’t want to see me… surely that said everything.

 

The trees cut off my view of the main valley, but I could hear some kind of celebratory chant picking up among the hork-bajir working in the trees. I wasn’t sure what had started it, but the beating of wood on wood became clearer, and the words louder.

 

“Hethan Gaferach! Hethan Gaferach!”

 

Free or dead.

 

The war cry was chanted in joy, amidst laughter. They had won. They were free. I, too, was free; free of the Pool, in my new body, without empire or direction or family or future or virtue. Free and dead.

 

Lot picked his way through the trees. He frowned a little when he saw me. Confused. Of course; he wouldn’t recognise me.

 

“Hello, Lot,” I said.

 

“Hello, friend,” he replied, puzzled. “I not know. Sorry.”

 

I huffed. “It me, Lot. Tessat – ”

 

I wasn’t able to finish giving my designation. With a roar of fury, Lot had leapt forward and lashed out one arm.

 

I flinched back, only to bump into a tree. Lot’s arm whizzed by my head, his wrist blade buried deep in the bark an inch from my face. His own face was twisted into a snarl, beak open, eyes scrunched. “You!”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You steal Lot. You taunt Lot. You no let Lot be free.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You take my daughter! My Lel! Two years, I hardly hug her, because you! You take me to fight, you take her father away!”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Lel almost old enough to be...” he tapped his head, his face a mask of disgust. “Like Lot. Like wife. Only war save her. You would have taken her.”

 

“The empire would have, yes. I didn’t want that for her, really I didn’t, but I… I wouldn’t have tried to stop them.”

 

“You no fight for her.”

 

“No.”

 

“But you fight for them. You make Lot fight for them.”

 

“I did my job. It was different than… than really fighting.” I wasn’t brave enough. Being a soldier wasn’t the same thing as fighting.

 

“Why you here?”

 

“To see you.”

 

Lot laughed hollowly. “You want forgive.”

 

“No. I don’t have the right to even ask that. That’s your choice, not mine. I want… I don’t know. I just thought… after everything I put you through, you deserved… I don’t know.”

 

Lot narrowed his eyes at my words. I’d slipped into Galard, I realised. The hork-bajir language didn’t have the words I needed.

 

It didn’t, technically, have the words we’d needed all along. Before us, hork-bajir hadn’t needed to say things like ‘fight’ or ‘war’. They hadn’t needed words like ‘free’ or ‘kill’. Even if my kind simply vanished overnight, we were in their culture now. Even when they healed and found a new home, we would be there forever.

 

Lot levered his blade out of the tree and lay his arm over my chest. “I kill you.”

 

“I won’t stop you.”

 

“You fight me.”

 

“No.”

 

Lot growled. “You make me fight, now I make you fight! You fight me!”

 

“I told you, I’m not a fighter.”

 

He moved his blade up to my throat. I tipped my head up and let him. Felt the pressure increase. The skin break. “I kill, how you stop?”

 

“After everything I did to you? I won’t. Your choice, not mine.”

 

The blade was removed. Before I could relax, the full force of Lot’s punch with his entire weight behind it sank right into my gut. I felt something snap inside me as I sank to my knees. A second punch took me square in the face, and I blinked heavily, trying to orient myself, trying to see.

 

“You not worth the blades,” Lot growled. I heard him turn and storm back off into the trees.

 

I heard him stop.

 

“Lel ask about you,” he said quietly. “I tell her now.”

 

“Are… are you sure you want that?” I gasped.

 

He snorted. “No my choice. No your choice. Her choice.”

 

“Yes. Agreed.”

 

“You stay until she decides to see you or not. If she says no, you go away. Don’t come back.”

 

“Yes.”

 

His footsteps resumed. Soon, I was alone.

 

I struggled to my feet. A pair of hands helped me up. Small, Adolescent. I wiped the blood from my eyes and peered down at the seer.

 

“I didn’t hear you come over,” I gasped, still winded.

 

“I’ve lead a lot of stealth missions.” She looked closely at my face. “You will heal quickly, but I want the healer to look at your gut. You were very fortunate; not everybody in your position survives. I’d hate to waste it now.”

 

I blinked at her. “You knew what I was.”

 

“I see many things. You’ll get used to it eventually. Come.”

 

“If you knew I wasn’t a hork-bajir, why did you let me in?”

 

“I told you. If we are to survive, then we must heal our the rifts created by war. We are building peace from the fragments we have, we cannot afford to throw any of them away. Once my people could afford anger and exclusion, and they did not know it. Now we know it, and we cannot afford to use it.” Her voice grew colder, firmer. “I am going to be straightforward with you, Tessat. We are going to build ourselves a future. You are going to do everything that you can to help us, because you have nowhere else to go and no other direction to take. We are going to let you, because we cannot afford to turn away help. These are the facts, regardless of how I, or you, or Lot feels about them, so I would prefer to proceed in the most amiable and community-strengthening way possible. Now are we going to dither here further, or can we get your ribs looked at?”

 

She led me through the trees. I let her.

 

Together, we strode through my new home.


	2. Chapter 2

There were three of us in the valley. Three ex-yeerks… no, three yeerks, in hork-bajir bodies. Kaleen had been in the valley for two weeks, and this combines with her higher status within the Empire meant that Arit and I tended to defer to her. Both pointless distinctions. Two weeks wouldn’t matter soon, and Empire rank already didn’t.

 

Kaleen was also disabled, missing one of her head blades and the two main blades on her left arm. She’d fought her ex-host at the hork-bajir’s insistent challenge, but had refused to do any damage during the fight. The host had not been so hesitant.

 

Arit hadn’t found his host. Either he’d beaten them to the valley, or… well, a lot could happen at the end of a war, even after all the documents are signed.

 

The way the hork-bajir treated us made no sense. We weren’t slaves, or prisoners of war. Obviously, nobody _liked_ us very much, and quite a few of the hork-bajir were very brusque with us, but that was about as far as things went. There were no threats. We were given equal consideration when it came to availability of food and shelter, and equal share of work, with considerations made for Kaleen due to her missing blades. Hork-bajir have personal social systems as complex as any other group species, but their actual society doesn’t really have room for proper tiers – there’s in-group, and out-group. In the out-group, there are groups of friends or neutral parties and, since the war, groups of enemies. That’s about as complicated as it gets. There are leaders and specialists and soforth, but that’s about it; if you’re in-group, you’re in-group. Toby had accepted us, so we were part of the colony. So far as the colony was concerned, we’d passed the judgement of both the leader and the ones we’d wronged, and our crimes were no longer relevant. Of course, that didn’t mean they couldn’t still hate us on a _personal_ level, and many did, but that wasn’t factored into anything.

 

We’d been offered new homes in the trees when our turns came up, listed in order of arrival into the colony. We’d turned them down, opting to share an old cave instead. None of us were going to go out there and live in luxury while there was still a housing shortage.

 

“Lel came looking for you again,” Kaleen told me one day as I hauled our ration of bark into the cave. She was resting against the wall, one eye barely open; I’d probably woken her up with all the noise. I didn’t feel too bad about it. Her lookout shift started soon anyway.

 

“I saw her just yesterday,” I grunted, trying to sneak a look at Kaleen’s arm wounds to see whether they were infected. She hated being fussed over, but the loss of a blade was a pretty serious injury, and Earth bacteria were relentless.

 

She noticed, and shifted her arm to hide them. “Well, she wanted to see you today. She worries about you.”

 

“She shouldn’t.”

 

“You should have fought him, you know. Were you afraid to lose a couple of blades? You were all ready to let him cut your throat.”

 

“I wasn’t going to fight him. Stop it.”

 

“Stop what?”

 

“Going all sub-Visser. Criticising me to put me off-balance so I’ll go see her.”

 

I expected her to deny it, but she just closed her eye again. “Sorry. Habit. I didn’t mean to.”

 

I sat against the wall. “This is really hard, isn’t it?”

 

“Too heavy? I’ll help.”

 

“Not the bark, being a hork-bajir. I keep… I can’t...” I shook my head. “The war’s over, but it was all we ever learned to be. You can’t not to your thing. I can’t not do mine.”

 

“Tessat, please. If you want to be a hork-bajir, go and be a hork-bajir.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I mean that you’re sitting in this dirty little cave with an outcast and a coward and trying to learn hork-bajir from other yeerks. If you want to be one of them, go learn from them. Don’t sit up here and say it isn’t what you want. Make up your mind.”

 

“You’re doing it again.”

 

“No, I’m not. I’m being straightforward. Arit cowers in here because he doesn’t want to face them, not really. I’m here because I’m not going to waltz into her community when she clearly doesn’t want me to. She let me live because she didn’t want to sully her blades under her own free will, and for no other reason. You have a little girl down there who wants you, and an ex-host who might hate you but is at least grateful for the mercy you showed his daughter, and is willing to actually accept you. So if you want to be a hork-bajir so badly, why are you up here whining about it with me?”

 

I frowned. “That last part was unnecessary.”

 

“Yes, it was. But the rest is true.”

 

“He shouldn’t have to deal with me.”

 

“That’s clearly a lot of festering barkrot. He has to deal with you more when Lel keeps traipsing up here and you keep avoiding her. If you didn’t want him to see you, why did you come here at all?”

 

I didn’t have an answer for that. I was saved from having to admit this by the clear sound of footsteps heading up to our cave.

 

“Arit’s back,” I said, standing up quickly. “I’ll see if he needs help carrying anything.”

 

I dashed out of the cave. The path was lit by a large bonfire on the floor of the valley. It was a special night, and the colony was gathering to celebrate and tell stories. We were colony, so we were welcome there. We never went.

 

The figure climbing the cliff was too small to be Arit. For a second I thought it might be Lel, but no; too large. In the dim firelight, she had to get quite close before I recognised her as Toby.

 

“Kaleen is – ”

 

“I am here for you, Tessat.” Toby glanced back down the cliff. “They’re not going to like this, but I have a job for you.”

 

I nodded. “What needs doing?”

 

“You’re going to be a spokesperson for the colony.”

 

I blinked. “What?”

 

She sighed. “Did I misspeak? Galard is still difficult for me.”

 

“I don’t think so, I just… don’t understand.”

 

“Then let me break it down for you. There is a lot of media interest in our colony. There is some not inconsiderable legal interest in our colony. We are growing by the day, and we are eventually going to run out of space for houses and not be able to grow enough bark to support our numbers. Some hork-bajir will be willing to go back to the homeworld, but for many of us, Earth _is_ our home world. We will need new territory. We will need to make business deals, legal deals, conservation deals, with a lot of humans in a lot of places, do you understand this situation?”

 

“Yes, I suppose.”

 

“Good. Now, we have human allies. We have Naomi… Ms Berenson’s… law firm, who do great work for us. We have Cassie, the Animorph, and her organisation; they have a lot of pull. We have various smatterings of smaller environmental and sapient rights organisations. But what we are lacking, quite notably, is hork-bajir advocates. I will not see our people treated like some sort of endangered species. I will not see us be treated as pawns without agency of our own. It would take too long to claw back from, and we’ve fought too hard for this. There’s me, but I can’t be everywhere, understand? I can’t be the exception that proves the rule, the token hork-bajir diplomat that everyone can shake hands with and feel better about condescending to our species. So I’m sending Mar Kettik out to do some little television interviews and some light negotiation and generally be charming until he’s established himself as somebody who can be spoken to on hork-bajir affairs.”

 

“Mar is pretty charming,” I admitted.

 

“Charming, yes, but not a quick thinker by human standards. It is very possible for somebody to trap him. Make him look silly or manipulate him into saying something inflammatory. So you’re going to be his partner. This is your area of expertise, is it not?”

 

Oh. “You spoke to Lot about me.”

 

“And Lel, and anyone else who interacted with you, yes. You have somewhat of a reputation for using your silver tongue, or Lot’s at any rate, for keeping yourself and your friends out of trouble. There are rumours of betting pools based on how long you would be able to go without being decapitated by Visser Three.”

 

“Nearly all of those betting pools are definitely rumours,” I confirmed quickly. “That only happened once. That I know of.”

 

Toby vaguely waved her hand in a gesture borrowed from humans, literally waving my comment away. “I want you to protect Mar in this way. Protect us. Will you do it?”

 

“You already know I will.”

 

She nodded. “It seemed appropriate to afford you the dignity of asking.” She touched her wrist blade to my shoulder blade in a gesture of colony siblinghood. “I _am_ glad to have you here, you know.”

 

I nodded. Of course she was glad to have me. She’d just explained how useful I was to the colony.

 

“I will explain things to Mar tomorrow. For now, I have work to do.” She shook her head. “There is always work to do.”

 

I watched her trudge back down the cliff, and turned back to the cave. The fire below outlined my hork-bajir shadow on the cliff wall. I hesitated.

 

Well, I _had_ accepted the job.

 

Reluctantly I turned and headed towards the warm, welcoming fire. Huffing hork-bajir laughter grew clearer as I approached. I could make out the silhouettes of dancers around the fire.

 

I had agreed to be a hork-bajir spokesperson.

 

That meant, I supposed, that I’d better start learning how to be a hork-bajir.


End file.
